Of sound and emotion
by Dantriestobeproductive
Summary: Danny is born with a curious ability, not that his mother is too concerned (there weren't even extra limbs!), and a curious life awaits him as the son of a Night Valian, school pariah and future half-ghost. Not that he knows the last part.


Danny grows up between his mother's chants and moans in the mornings and the buzz of creation that fills the house the rest of the day. The buzzing is more a feeling than anything else, like touching electricity with your fingertips, and no one but him seems to feel it (though, at asking her mother, she assures him that a sensory system or two more isn't something to be afraid of, and that he has to love himself however shape or extra limbs he has). The buzzing tingles his skin in a pleasant way, and he spends great lengths of his childhood tracing the invisible wavelengths through his home, and later at school, which kind of earns him his label as a 'weirdo'. Still, he makes a friend, Tucker, who seems pretty fascinated by his ability. Danny likes his soft waves of Recklessness and Friendship-over-all.

Later comes Sam, with her almost demanding waves of Individuality and Searching, and the way her waves seem to tangle and fuse with theirs makes him laugh, just after Tucker has cracked a really bad joke. She looks at Danny then, smirks, and the three of them end up laughing and snickering.

It's the start of a beautiful friendship.

* * *

When he finally gets permission from his parents to show Sam and Tucker the bloodstones, he does so with extreme caution. He's afraid of scaring them, since the bloodstones _do_ buzz and, at random times, even bleed, but everything goes smoothly. There's the strange question about his family being in a cult, but Danny shakes his head, and explains that his mother comes from a little, strange town. He promises to show them the Radio's Broadcast someday at seeing (and feeling) their eagerness, and then they spend the rest of the day making Danny tell them every story he knows of Night Vale.

It's kind of liberating to share his mother's stories with his friends.

Even if they look doubtful at some of them.

* * *

Danny never feels 'different' or, more accurately, never realizes there's a difference between 'different' and 'unique'. Unique is knowing that the space you take in the heart of your beloved ones is only yours, and no one could ever take it away (at least without a series of painful, traumatizing and brain damaging operations). Different...different is so standard for him, that he can't trace it back to when it begins. Different is being pushed against lockers, called freak and insulted. And it's not that he's afraid (more than anyone else would be, at least), but every time the angry jocks come near him he just feels so sick he can't but grimace, which does him no good at all.

Different for him is as much as a part of life as unique, and so he doesn't correct Sam when she starts to call him those things.

* * *

There are things that are of common knowledge. The fact that his parents are obsessed with ghosts, and constantly create new devices to catch them that end up as failures is one. The fact that his sister is smart, rational and has a great future, compared with him, a weird boy who has average grades and is the embodiment of the term 'loser', is other. The fact that, even so, no one in the family has really friends except him, is another one.

But then, there are also things that only a handful know, like the fact that his mother comes from a city where children learn to handle firearms when they're seven, or the fact that they own a humming bloodstone circle that some Thursdays updates its monotone hum for a Queen song, or the fact that his parents, as crazy as they are, know what they're doing (well, more or less).

The fact that his parents are building a door to the Ghost Zone, as they explain, is something only his family (and friends) know. So of course, when the Portal doesn't work, only a handful are told.

Sam gets curious, and so does Tucker. Danny shows them, slightly dazed by the amount of hope and grief and pain and effort and more things that he can't name that _pours_ from the tear, and all around it. Somehow, Sam convinces him to go inside, curiosity taking the best of him.

_His mother always told him to be selective with his curiosity._

The machine turns on.

_He should have listened._

* * *

Getting ghost powers, and getting used to them, are two different things. Creating a double life, too, seems like a surrealist series of coincidental and bizarre happenings.

But it's okay, once Danny gets the hang of it.

Though _man it hurts_.

Everything seems sharper, his six and seventh senses biting and chewing when all they did before was brush and tickle. Suddenly, the humming of the bloodstones turns into a full orchestrated melody so complex it shouldn't even be perceptible for the human mind, much less comprehended. The buzzing of emotions and feelings turn into high-pitched screams, to the point Danny has to take a week of rest after collapsing in class the day after the accident, nose bleeding and a headache filling his brain with white noise.

It gets more bearable as the week passes, though. And he adapts to the...novelty. Danny's able to think mostly normally after two weeks, and by some miracle of nature the shrieks stop being so noisy, to slowly turn again into luring hums, sometimes even songs, velvet brushes, the taste of chocolate in his mouth or the smell of cinnamon. It depends of what sort of feeling it is, but his new...attraction to them is better than the headaches. It's curious, too, how he feels more satisfied after a walk through the halls than after eating five nasty burgers.

But Danny brushes it off, starts defending the city when the ghosts start to come, and tries to avoid turning into his parents' first specimen. Later comes Vlad, crazy and arrogant (_lonely and so so angry, so lost into himself he can't feel anymore, not really_), not human. Like him. Kind of a shock, to realize you're of another species now, that technically you aren't _homo sapiens _anymore. But Danny remembers his mother sayings, 'no matter the shape or limbs', so he simply accepts his new species with a very 'Night Valian' shrug and goes on with his life.

Then, one year after changing species, half-dying or whatever you'd want to call it, his mother decides to take them all to a trip.

To her home town.

...Well, Danny always wanted to see one of those frightening Librarians.

(Let's say that his sister isn't amused at the prospect of man-eating books.)


End file.
